


What Kind Of Witch

by SpicyReyes



Series: Songbird [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Author Hates Killing Characters, Edith Elric vs The World, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, HUGHES LIVES, Kicking Ass In Skirts, Nina Lives, Trans Fem!Ed, Trans Female Character, Transphobia, massive spoilers bc this covers basically the whole series, title is from an against me! song bc Trans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 04:23:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15987545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicyReyes/pseuds/SpicyReyes
Summary: A skirt and a can-do attitude have ripple effects, as the world bends to make room for the girl who needs no permission to be herself.





	What Kind Of Witch

**Author's Note:**

> this is just...songbird's effect on the manga/brotherhood plot  
> which is like 60% "this is different bc ed is different" and 40% "author really hates killing characters"  
> im a huge baby you guys leave me alone  
> enjoy  
> also Warnings bc like...edith is not nice to herself and several people are ALSO not nice to her

Bulky, heavy sort of things, like Edith’s preferred pair of boots, were not meant to be worn through a desert. 

She would complain about the sheer effort that had to go into every step she took, but there were two reasons she held her tongue: 

1) Alphonse was in far worse shape, his armor constantly getting weighed down by sand, forcing him to stop and empty each leg before he sunk into the desert completely, and

2) The heat had provided her the perfect excuse to venture out on a mission in her newer clothes, rather than her remaining ‘Edward’ wardrobe she often defaulted to for any situations outside of Mustang’s office.

As uncomfortable as the heat was, it was nice to think she was going to meet new people as herself, rather than her military persona. Not, of course, that most people knew there  _ was  _ an Edith - even Mustang’s staff still just thought her a peculiar young boy with a tendency to crossdress. Well, most of them, anyway. She’d told Hawkeye - or, well, she’d told  _ Mustang  _ to tell Hawkeye, and she assumed he did - and Falman was always really quiet when people started talking about her, so he probably suspected something. 

“Sister,” Al called to her, and she stopped to look at him, watching as he unhinged a foot from his armor to empty it out. “I think I see it.”

She looked in the direction he was facing, grinning as she also spotted the outline of a city. “Finally!” she cried out. “We’ve been walking  _ forever.  _ Why is this city so far away from the closest train station? No wonder no one knows anything about it. I’m getting  _ paid _ to walk out here and I still don’t wanna.”

Al shook his head. “You should have worn different shoes.”

“It’s not the boots!” she defended. “It’s the heat.”

“The skirt doesn’t help?”

Edith raised a finger. “First, it’s not a skirt. Izumi-sensei would feel it in the air if I wore a skirt on a mission and show up to string me up. It’s a skort - there are  _ shorts _ under it, which makes it practical.”

“You could have just worn shorts.”

“You could just shut up,” she countered. “And  _ second,  _ no. It doesn’t help. My knees are slightly less hot than the rest of my body, but all of me is  _ fucking dying.”  _

They finally,  _ finally  _ reached the edge of the city, and Edith was struck by the eerie emptiness of the streets.

“I guess everyone else thinks it’s hot, too,” she murmured. “No one is outside.”

“There’s some people up there,” Al pointed out. 

Sure enough, there was a little shop set up, next to a fountain that looked uncomfortably tempting to an overheated Edith. 

When they got close, though, she frowned, listening. There was some sort of broadcast coming from the little radio on the counter, and in the distance, she could hear the echoes of it playing off speakers in other areas all around them. 

“Oh!” the man at the stand greeted them. “We don’t usually get travellers here. Can I get you something?”

“Water, please,” Alphonse asked. “She could use it.”

Edith barely paid any mind to her brother trying to care for her, instead hopping up onto a barstool, pointing a finger at the radio. “What is that?”

Luckily, the man wasn’t the type of smartass to respond  _ a radio,  _ because Edith did not have patience for that. Instead, he said, “That’s Father Cornello. He’s the prophet of Leto, the sun god.”

Edith narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the radio. “A ‘prophet’?”

The man set a glass of water on the counter, which Al quickly forced into Edith’s hands - whether because she needed it, or to keep her from making commentary, she couldn’t say.

She obligingly took a drink of it as the man continued to speak. 

“I know it might be hard to believe, for an outsider,” he told them. “But Father Cornello is the real deal. He even performs miracles! They say he can even resurrect the dead.”

Edith choked in mid-sip. “He can  _ what?”  _

“He has a demonstration today, if you’re sticking around,” the man continued, oblivious to Edith’s alarm. “It’s really a sight to see.”

“I bet,” she muttered in response.

  
  
  


The ‘prophet’ was performing alchemy, to absolutely no shock of the Elrics’. What caught their attention, though, was his disregard of equivalent exchange, gestures all punctuated with the wave of a hand that held a red stone ring.

A Philosopher's Stone. It had to be. 

Finally.  _ Finally,  _ they had a chance to get their bodies back. They just had to get that stone.

  
  
  


The girl in the church was not very happy about Edith’s casual atheism, but she agreed to take him to see Cornello, which is all that really mattered. 

Up until the fight breaks out, and Cornello orders Rose to kill them, and she shoots off Al’s helmet. 

The clunk of the metal hitting the ground was immediately followed by a loud crash as the rest of the suit followed its helmet, and Edith was partially tempted to roll her eyes at the action. Alphonse was always so paranoid about his helmet coming loose, he’d probably unbalanced himself trying to keep it in place.

“You should have just let it fall, Al,” she called.

“What?” Rose breathed, looking horrified, as Al pushed himself up off the floor. 

“I don’t like to drop it!” Alphonse defended, pushing back up to stand, helmet held in his hands. “It’s really disorienting!”

“What...? What  _ are  _ you?” Rose cried. 

“They are abominations, Rose,” Cornello called to them. “Hollow armor...But you won’t win that easily!”

His hand slammed down on the railing in front of him, and a door behind Edith opened. A moment later, a creature emerged, body an amalgamation of different animal parts.

A chimera. He’d created a fucking  _ chimera _ . 

It was sort of satisfying to watch the creature gnaw uselessly at her arm, though, even if it was an objectively horrible creation. 

“Metal limbs…” Cornello observed. “And you performed alchemy without a circle...Could it be you are-...?”

Edith tossed her head back, glaring at Cornello. “What about it?”

Cornello paused, then tipped his head back in a cruel laugh. “Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist! You’re hardly what I expected.”

Rose turned confused eyes to Edith, who shook her head, reaching up to tear the shredded fabric off of her arm. 

“My  _ name,”  _ she carefully enunciated, “is  _ Edith.”  _

And then she punched the chimera.

Watching it slide, unconscious, across the floor, she couldn’t help but pity the thing. It didn’t ask to be put in that body, and in a way, she could relate to that. 

Looking to Rose, she said, “Listen. This arm, and my leg, and Al’s body -  _ that’s  _ what happens when a human tries to play at being a god. That’s what happens when someone tries to resurrect the dead. Don’t do it. Don’t go down the same road we did. It never ends well,  _ never.”  _

Rose doesn’t believe them.

It’s fine, though. Within the span of a few hours,  _ everyone  _ believes them.

  
  
  


“Is it really okay to just...leave the city like that?” Al asked, once they were back on the train headed home to Central. “We kind of destroyed their whole lives, revealing Cornello was a fake.”

“Would you rather they have become mindless slaves to some weird cult?” Edith shook her head. “No, it’s better this way. They’ll learn to stand on their own two feet, each and every one of them.”

At least, she hoped. 

  
  
  
  


She mentioned the chimera to Mustang, admitting she was curious about it, and within the day he’d had her set up to study at the home of a chimera expert for a few days.

Shou Tucker was a quiet man, greasy and wiry, and he frowned at her from behind a pair of wire-frame glasses.

“Edward Elric, correct?” he asked, when Mustang introduced them.

“Just Ed,” she replied, because she was back in her coat but that name would never really fit. 

Tucker’s lips pressed into a thin little line, that curved in a mimicry of a smile that didn’t reach past his cheeks. “I prefer propriety, if you don’t mind, Edward.”

Edith’s blood ran cold. 

The thing was, she wasn’t a big fan of frilly or ‘girly’ clothing, like skirts or dresses, but she often wore them, just because they were the boldest statement she could make without words. And while she limited those, usually, to under-the-table operations and loitering around Mustang’s office, plenty of people still  _ saw  _ her. Everyone  _ knew  _ that the Fullmetal Alchemist had a weird habit that no one really had an explanation for beyond whispers and cruel jokes. 

And, apparently, ‘everyone’ included Tucker, and he did not feel up to entertaining her. 

Edward Elric, the alchemic prodigy, was welcome here.  _ Edith  _ was not. 

  
  
  


Tucker had a daughter, and a dog, and Edith loved them.

Nina took to referring to her as  _ brother,  _ which was uncomfortable, but she was more than happy to use ‘Ed’ in place of ‘Edward,’ so it wasn’t  _ too _ bad. 

They spent days with Tucker, reading through his library and playing with his daughter, and she felt his eyes on her every second.

He didn’t like her. He  _ really  _ didn’t like her, and he felt his contempt everywhere she went.

Something was odd to her, though. Tucker clearly thought she was horrible, but he let her near his daughter without protest. 

Come to think of it, he never really interacted with his daughter. She’d approached him a couple of times while Edith was within earshot, and he’d dismissed her almost absentmindedly each time. 

Tucker didn’t care very much for his daughter, and that was something Edith couldn’t stand for. 

  
  
  


“I don’t like Tucker,” Edith informed Mustang, one day on the ride back to the dorms. “He’s...creepy.”

“Yeah,” Mustang agreed. “That’s the general opinion of most that meet him. It’s why his work doesn’t take place in a lab, like most state alchemists’ research.”

Edith frowned. “No one likes him? At all?”

Mustang hesitated, drumming his fingers on the wheel, before he spoke again. “When Tucker got his certification, it was...strange, to say the least. He was shaking during the exam, and he apologized for it, saying that his wife had left only a few days before and he was still thrown from it.”

“Overshare,” she muttered. 

“Exactly,” Mustang said. “But the thing was, none of us could blame her timing. If she saw that... _ thing  _ he’d created, for his certification, no wonder she didn’t stay around.”

“The chimera?” Edith asked. “You said it could talk, right?”

“It only spoke to us once,” Mustang confirmed. 

“What did it say.”

“‘I want to die.’ And then it starved itself.”

Edith froze.

Wheels turned, cogs ticking their way into place.

“Mustang,” she said, voice low. “You’re saying Tucker’s wife left him?”

“...Yes?”

“At the same time he made the chimera?”

Mustang gave her a concerned look. “Yes. What are you-...?”

“Turn the car around,” she said, quick and panicked. “We need to go back. Right now.”

Luckily, Mustang didn’t question her, just listened.

  
  
  
  


Tucker was drawing the transmutation circle when they got there. Human transmutation was scribbled into the lines, making it clear what the intent was, and he folded like paper when they confronted him. 

The military took him into custody, and Edith stood off to the side of the soldiers in the yard, wringing her hands.

Eventually, Mustang emerged, and she was at his side in an instant.

“Nina,” she breathed out, harsh. “What happened to Nina? Did you find her?”

“She was shut into the basement, with her dog,” Mustang confirmed. “One can only assume they were the ingredients he intended to use.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Mustang promised. “Probably a little bored, because I left her with Maes.”

Edith wasn’t feeling up to laughter. “Hughes has her?”

“Depending on how she reacts to his photo albums,” Mustang said, “he might have her for a while.”

Edith finally,  _ finally  _ relaxed. “Oh. Good. He’s...he’s a good man. A good dad. He’ll take care of her.”

Mustang gave her a slightly knowing look, which she ignored.

Her dad had been a piece of worthless trash, if you asked her. She wasn’t about to let some other girl face the same thing, or  _ worse.  _

She’d rather Tucker pulled a Hohenheim and just fucking walked out. Anything would be better than... _ this.  _

At least the girl was okay. No matter what happened, no matter how much she wanted to tear Tucker into shreds, Nina was alright.

That was all she could ask.


End file.
